Learning Objectives
- Students will be able to define the role of framing and context as it relates to conveying scientific information and evidence
- Students will be able to communicate science without framing the science around race
- Students will be able to specify roles within their group collaboration (communicating author, scientific content eye, audience eye, creative eye)
Science Story Framing: Narrative
What does it mean to construct a science story?
Science stories are not (often) fantastical. In contrast to confabulations and pure storytelling, they must be based in clear evidence (preferentially with citations!).
Despite this need for a basis in empirical evidence, science narratives can still use common elements of story structure to better engage an audience. This is the same kind of technique you may have seen or experienced through a news broadcast, a nature documentary, or narrative book, or in a well-crafted podcast. Think about how the various science communciation examples you’ve seen so far use story telling and narrative to nest empirical data or results in a broader/more accessible narrative to make the science more compelling…
There are several examples of the standard elements of story structure. As BU students, you’ve likely encountered these in your First-Year Writing Seminar, and may want to review these elements to help with this exercise. These are not universal across the world - different cultures may find different story structures compelling, and this may be a consideration for your Target Audience - but they can provide a starting point for framing a story’s narrative, based in scientific evidence.
Keep in mind, the elements we discuss in class are not exhaustive or definitive, and can be seen as based largely in a European-centric narrative structure, in fact tracing to much of the work of the Greek philosopher Aristotle.
We encourage you to think broadly about elements of storytelling from across the world, and to research these methods if you desire.
Remember:
- What are the main points you want to get across? (Key pieces of evidence)
- Who is your target audience? What are their demographics and psychographics (from last Discussion)?
- How will you communicate to them?
- How will you tell the story you want to tell?
- What is your media type / platform?
For more detail, please check out these resources:
Crafting Your Own Narrative
Are You Part of the Narrative?
We’ve already talked about how important it is that the medium you use for communicating science be appropriate to your goals. One crucial piece anyone communicating science has to remember is that you, the communicator, are part of the medium.
Depending on what medium you choose, this may be more or less important.
If you’re making an infographic, for example, your identity may be masked from the audience, and so your identity may provide little, if any, context to the communication aside from how you choose to frame or portray the science you discuss.
The identity of who makes and delivers a message, though, can be very powerful.
@tinalasisi #stitch with @charliedarwinning #biologicalanthropology #skincolor #humanevolution #LearnOnTiktok
♬ original sound - Tina Lasisi, PhD
A great example is the work of Dr. Tina Lasisi. Dr. Lasisi is an Assistant Professor of Biological Anthropology at the University of Michigan, and a very active science communicator. As a researcher, she is among the first to study the evolutionary biology of hair texture. Necessarily, as someone studying hair texture, she also focuses academically on the ways in which notions of race and biology intersect. Her focus on these topics is, in part, inspired and informed by her experience as a person with both African and European ancestry. She brings this identity to her science communication through self-presentation, primarily on TikTok.
How do you think Dr. Lasisi’s self-presentation might be important to her doing this science? More importantly, for these modules, how is her identity important to her science communication? For example, how would it affect her audience, and the effectiveness of her SciComm, if she were making these same TikToks as a white man?
Keep this in mind when thinking about how you want to craft your narrative. Are you a part of the story you’re telling? Should you be? What doors might your identity in the narrative open or close for your audience, and for their understanding of the science?
You can (optionally) read theses sources, below, for some more thoughts on this topic:
Hill 2015: Embodiment of science in science slams. A case of informal public science communication.
Casad et al. 2018: Wise psychological interventions to improve gender and racial equality in STEM.
Storyboarding Your Project
In Discussion today, once you’ve thought through what you want your narrative to be, you should spend some time trying to storyboard your SciComm. Click on the image above to get some clear and easy tips about how to successfully develop a helpful storyboard that will make putting together your final SciComm project a lot easier.
This will look slightly different depending on your media type (for example, a documentary video vs. an Adobe Creative Cloud presentation), but the general idea is the same - to craft narrative “beats” or points in your science communication.
By next week’s Discussion (which will be held remotely), you should have already completed a draft of your SciComm, which you will upload to a Blackboard Discussion group for the Peer Review process!
For Next Week
Continue your science storytelling journey! We have just 1 week until you present your draft SciComm for peer-review (in the next Discussion). Use your storyboarding to create your first draft!
Familiarize yourself with the Project Peer-Review / Final Rubric, which you will use to give feedback to to other groups in the peer-review process on Blackboard (https://learn.bu.edu)!
Your draft SciComm project should be uploaded to the Discussion on Blackboard by Midnight of April 24 so that they are available for Peer Review during Discussion section time on April 22 and 23!
Back to SciComm Home
Please note: the SciComm aspects of this course are based closely on a similar course at UC Berkeley, IB35ac, designed by Leslea Hlusko (© 2020). These materials have been accessed and adapted with her permission as part of the BRIDGE Project, developed by her student, Ph.D. Candidate Taormina Lepore.